November 28, 1978: S.F. Mayor, Supervisor gunned down

The San Diego Union-Tribune will mark its 150th anniversary in 2018 by presenting a significant front page from the archives each day throughout the year.

Tuesday, November 28, 1978

In 1978, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to a major public office in the United States, were shot to death inside City Hall by disgruntled former supervisor Dan White.

A conservative, White had been the only one of 11 supervisors to vote against a gay civil-rights ordinance backed by Milk.

Here are the first few paragraphs of the story:

By George Condon Jr., San Diego Union Staff Writer

SAN FRANCISCO — Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were shot and killed yesterday morning in their city hall offices in a fatal climax to a political disagreement with a former San Francisco supervisor.

Dan White, a 32-year-old ex-policeman who had been trying to get Moscone to appoint him to the vacant supervisor’s seat he resigned only 17 days ago, surrendered to police here 30 minutes after the shooting and was charged with two counts of murder.

The shots that felled Moscone and Milk plunged this city — already reeling from bizarre events surrounding the San Francisco-based Peoples Temple — into a fitful, self-analytical, almost frightened mood that was evident in the calls of persons on radio talk shows, the faces of the mourners who milled about city hall and the nervousness of the security guards who seemed to be everywhere.

The shooting came only 30 minutes before Moscone was to announce that he was not appointing White to his 8th District seat on the Board of Supervisors, the legislative body for both the city and county of San Francisco.

The vacancy was created Nov. 10 when White resigned his seat after only 10 months on the board and complained he could not support his family on the $9,600 annual salary.

White reconsidered his position only five days later and tried to withdraw his resignation but was unable to stop the forces he had set in motion.

Stymied in legal efforts to stop Moscone from appointing anyone else and feeling double-crossed by the mayor, an agitated White came to city hall at 10:45 a.m. to see Moscone, who had just concluded meeting with some of White’s supporters, according to Mel Wax, Moscone’s press secretary.

Moscone, after laughingly rejecting the suggestion that a member of his staff join him during the confrontation with White, led the disgruntled former supervisor into the mayor’s back office, a small, comfortable den-like room, for the fateful meeting.

Within five minutes, three shots rang out. The 49-year-old mayor, struck twice in the head and once in the arm, fell fatally wounded.